People used to put email addresses for the FCC and FTC in contexts where bots would harvest addresses for spam. The theory was, spammers would target the head of the FTC who would be outraged and annihilate them. The practice was, .gov addresses were usually immune from spam. I would like the trick to have worked. I doubt it helped.

I have a problem with others deciding what is good for me, without asking my opinion. I also have a problem with technology being able to censor my mail even if I use a 'hot term' out of context.

Admittedly, the current technology is wonderful and, to me, nearly magical but far too many users know enough about it to realize how severely their privacy can be invaded by others for any reason they choose.

I dislike it when companies decide to protect me from myself. I also have a problem with companies deciding they can help themselves to my personal information and web browsing without my permission.

Didn't Apple, with the iPod, develop a way for you to buy and download music -- which then expired after a period of time and could not be downloaded or copied to any other media? (I could be wrong here, but I dimly recall something about that. I don't own or use iPods.)

Later on, I read about cell phones with GPS, being able to be turned on remotely to track the owner. It was for our own good. Then laptops popped up with built in webcam's that a hacker could activate and peer into your home so long as your system was turned on and connected to the internet.

Rik01:Didn't Apple, with the iPod, develop a way for you to buy and download music -- which then expired after a period of time and could not be downloaded or copied to any other media? (I could be wrong here, but I dimly recall something about that. I don't own or use iPods.)

No. ITMS has always been, you buy it and its yours and stays on your computer/iPod whatever forever. No expiration date was ever part of the deal.

Rik01:I have a problem with others deciding what is good for me, without asking my opinion. I also have a problem with technology being able to censor my mail even if I use a 'hot term' out of context.

"Bob: I have completed the investigation into Ted's web browsing, and I think we've got a problem. The IT department's internet usage logs show that on Friday, between 1:19 pm and 4:22 pm, he visited 11 different websites with names such as "barely legal teens in elephant masks," "naked zookeepers feed sisal to wombats," and "nude Latvian housewife shaves yak." This is particularly troublesome, insofar as Ted was in the operating room, performing a cardiac bypass at the time. I'm inclined to fire him, but won't do so unless you respond to this e-mail that it's ok to do so. Thanks."

"P.S. Just to be sure, I checked -- 'shaves yak' was not a euphemism."

Being a nerd, I often see things and attribute an alignment to them. Whenever I experience any of Apple's products or read about them in the media (or witness their followers) -- I immediately think: Lawful Evil.

At this point, I'm completely convinced they're textbook examples of LE. Control people with lies and deceit, yet do it with intelligence and competence. Now, I mostly wonder which layer of Hell their front office is based out of.

Speaker2Animals:Rik01: Didn't Apple, with the iPod, develop a way for you to buy and download music -- which then expired after a period of time and could not be downloaded or copied to any other media? (I could be wrong here, but I dimly recall something about that. I don't own or use iPods.)

No. ITMS has always been, you buy it and its yours and stays on your computer/iPod whatever forever. No expiration date was ever part of the deal.

Tell that to the people that bought Siri before Apple decided to integrate it.

Yeah, why aren't people supporting the rights of eighteen-and-a-day year old girls to make money showing their firm, nubile jubblies to anyone who wants to pay for the privilege? For god's sake -- they're adults! This is flat-out suppression of the economic recovery, this is.

Rik01:I have a problem with others deciding what is good for me, without asking my opinion. I also have a problem with technology being able to censor my mail even if I use a 'hot term' out of context.

Years ago I started a blog called "Killing Trees" on an writing industry site. One day the blog was locked and set to 'adult content' since the title tripped some automated violence-filter. A moderator looked at the situation and agreed with the filter -- any use of the word 'killing' was a depiction of violence and not allowed in any way, even in a common writing term. Other not-necessarily-violent words that tripped their filter were 'beat', 'smash', and 'punch'.

Their site, their rules. I went somewhere else where the mods understood such radical concepts as "context".

RickN99:Rik01: I have a problem with others deciding what is good for me, without asking my opinion. I also have a problem with technology being able to censor my mail even if I use a 'hot term' out of context.

Years ago I started a blog called "Killing Trees" on an writing industry site. One day the blog was locked and set to 'adult content' since the title tripped some automated violence-filter. A moderator looked at the situation and agreed with the filter -- any use of the word 'killing' was a depiction of violence and not allowed in any way, even in a common writing term. Other not-necessarily-violent words that tripped their filter were 'beat', 'smash', and 'punch'.

Their site, their rules. I went somewhere else where the mods understood such radical concepts as "context".

vygramul:It even looks into PDFs? So, if you PDFed a book you bought, they might delete it as a POSSIBLY illegal copy?

Any e-mail system today - whether it be a enterprise product like IronMail or a consumer product like gmail - looks inside any piece of content (pdf, zip, etc). It how it figures out if the content is malware or not. I've configured enterprise mail systems to quarantine or alert on encrypted messages so we can keep tabs on what are dear trusted employees are doing.

/what's true of Apple is true of gmail, hotmail (outlook.com), etc.//if you really care about getting all your mail unmolested - run your own SMTP server

Uzzah:"Bob: I have completed the investigation into Ted's web browsing, and I think we've got a problem. The IT department's internet usage logs show that on Friday, between 1:19 pm and 4:22 pm, he visited 11 different websites with names such as "barely legal teens in elephant masks," "naked zookeepers feed sisal to wombats," and "nude Latvian housewife shaves yak." This is particularly troublesome, insofar as Ted was in the operating room, performing a cardiac bypass at the time. I'm inclined to fire him, but won't do so unless you respond to this e-mail that it's ok to do so. Thanks."

"P.S. Just to be sure, I checked -- 'shaves yak' was not a euphemism."

rebelyell2006: Sucks to be that person writing a thesis about the phenomenon of the "barely legal teens". Months or years of work disappearing for no good reason.

I heard a tale of processing woe in college.

A student was writing his thesis. He had a file for the introduction, conclusion, and so forth, and in addition to the beginning and end matter had a big file for the core of the work. One night most of his thesis disappeared.

Disk space was precious in those days. When Unix programs crashed they tended to leave behind large files named "core." The system would delete such files as junk. The lesson was, don't name valuable files core.

As someone who works in messaging security I can say that it is not at all uncommon. It's a little different because many of these are personal accounts, but when it comes to filtering spam for business communications its unlikely that phrases like 'barely legal teens', 'russian lolitas' or 'she'll love your throbbing p3n!s' have much professional value. Most of these would be dropped outright. Emails with words like 'boobs' and 'cock' would probably just get the message sent to quarantine.

For every person who complains about not getting a specific email there are five who would complain about getting it.

There's a Farker who one of the mods used to call by the nickname "Mr. Post" because his real login is on Fark's unsayable words list. Many other filtered login names got cleaned up around 2003, like some with the word that filters to fark.

gingerjet:vygramul: It even looks into PDFs? So, if you PDFed a book you bought, they might delete it as a POSSIBLY illegal copy?

Any e-mail system today - whether it be a enterprise product like IronMail or a consumer product like gmail - looks inside any piece of content (pdf, zip, etc). It how it figures out if the content is malware or not. I've configured enterprise mail systems to quarantine or alert on encrypted messages so we can keep tabs on what are dear trusted employees are doing.

/what's true of Apple is true of gmail, hotmail (outlook.com), etc.//if you really care about getting all your mail unmolested - run your own SMTP server